Vanity Mowing

Vanity Mowing

originally published in Lancaster Farming by Troy Bishopp

I admit it.  I do it.  I want to do less of it.  However, can you feel the subtle pressure to keep pastures manicured, as society and neighbors judge your management by the place you keep? Unfortunately, perception is reality in today’s world.

Mowing is an activity that almost everyone likes to do, because it gives you instant gratification over Mother Nature and her merry band of weeds.  When you get done, it just looks prettier, neater and well managed.  You didn’t even fathom, that you created an agri-tourism moment by keeping your grass mowed and your animals outside.  What person driving by wouldn’t think, hey, lets get a picture vs. some wild and wooly pasture vista.  And what about the economic boom for our friends at the implement dealership selling all those compact diesels and bush hogs.  I dare say that my local iron men sell more of these than anything else, so who am I to question a neat and clean paradigm that effects the purse strings of so many.

Well for starters, the price of fuel alone, to conquer the grass jungle is quite painful to the pocketbook.  The chasing of that clump of buttercup, knapweed or thistle tends to, at least for me, cost plenty in equipment repair, and we all know the price of parts these days.  Lastly it takes my time, which is the resource I have the least of.  It might be all right for a person stuck behind a desk all day to feel the wind in their hair and the smell of diesel, but not for me.  If this bantering about clipping has left you just a little guilt-ridden, I have some thoughts to help you shift to a more carbon-neutral system.

 I submit to you there may be a better way and it starts right at home.  This mindset starts with some holistic thinking and continues with pasture management, utilizing your own natural mowers, who by the way, were created to eat forage long before there was iron and fuel.  The big question is do your animals even know how to eat a pasture smorgasbord, which includes various undesirable (according to humans) plants?  Without formal training from Mom or Mom-like peers, how would they know or even try something new.  Countless farmers telling the story of turning out the cows, only to watch them stand in a sea of green wondering what to do substantiate this modern problem.  I say modern because today’s dairy animals just haven’t had the life experiences like other livestock sectors have.  This predicament of inexperience needs to be addressed by training your animals to the landscape along with transitional feeding and lots of patience before you can curb your mowing habit.  Check out www.livestockforlandscapes.com or Behave.Net for more on this important topic.

 So your animals are trained but are you?  If you want an efficient gang of mowers you must change your management.  And maybe even complimentary, different classes of animals, such as bred heifers, stockers, draft horses or cow/calf pairs mixed with sheep and goats to do this landscape design.  This diversity would be ideal but unlikely on many farms.  What a shame.  20 years of sculpting pastures has taught me that stock density, paddock sizing and timing are the keys to keep weeds and seeds at bay.  For me to be successful in a mowing venture, I must instill a herd mentality, and nothing does that better than frequent moves on smaller paddocks.  While it is true that I tend to have larger herds of up to 100 head on 2 acres/day, it could be mirrored by 10 animals on a 1/3acre/day.  The cool thing about this practice is how efficient the animals graze because they don’t want their buddies to move in on their sweet spot.  If you’ve ever been to a farm meeting when there was only one chocolate milk left, you know what I’m saying.  What is not eaten is usually trampled into oblivion or fouled on.  In the case of severe infestations of thistle, knapweed or multi-flora rose, try punishing them by seeding a salt block or minerals in the middle and look out! 

 It may be somewhat unsettling to be left with a battle zone of cowpies, stomped in herbage and teaming armies of manure movers but take heart, you have just mimicked Mother Nature’s design plan.  One only has to remember the vast herds that roamed the prairie as a testament to this perfect system.  If you placed a “pasture cam” on my roughed up pastures you will notice within one day there will be holes all through the ground and manure as nutrients begin moving below.  On day two, little yellow springs signal new plant growth using all that fertile water to their advantage.  And on day three as if by magic my flock of turkeys and crows busily go through each brown food plot to harvest emerging juicy and delicious bugs and play manure spreader. 

You can’t believe how fast this effect gets compounded day after day until the forage is ready to be munched again, minus the weed weaklings.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having so-called weeds (forage), like dandelion, lambsquarter and knapweed around because they add diversity to the sward along with high nutrition and medicinal qualities as well as an indicator of fertility needs.  I’m just fine with what Mother Nature intended for me to have, given I work with her not against.   If you don’t have the animal power to control the weeds, I would suggest consciously letting your pastures get a little ugly and get the most bang for your mower buck by shredding the undesirable plants when they are the most vunerable, before they set seed.  It can be very tough to let yourself view uglyness till July, but it will curb next year’s crop considerably. 

I am still far from perfection when it comes to this mowing quandry, but I will let you in on a little secret.  I do maintain our closest 4 acre picture window view of grassland with some fossil fuel mostly for my cul-de-sac neighbors and invited guests to the farm.  When folks venture up the drive and see our painted barns, my wife’s beautiful garden and green landscape, perception really is reality, even though they have no clue on how hard and expensive it is to maintain the “look” of a farm they read about in their childhood.  I figure with all the soil savings, carbon sequestration and sun-inspired meat we grow that it would be ok to exercise our pre-1974 tractor’s and mower’s oil.  If nothing else, mowing scares up insects for my tree swallow friends, warms tractor gears for winter and provides time-lapsed therapy for my heavy metal disease.